The City of Nanaimo committed $525,000 to the former nightclub and church at 25 Victoria Rd. in 2008, purchasing the building for about $450,000 and turning the remaining funds over to the CVI Centre for the Arts to manage and complete upgrades. It also provides an annual $6,300 permissive tax exemption.

Since the purchase, the building has seen a variety of arts activity, but has barely broken even.

Camela Tang, president of the Centre for the Arts, said year-to-date operating expenses for 2009-10 were $9,036.13, while revenue was $10,046.09.

Tang said the building required massive upgrades to bring it up to code, with work done on the sprinkling and electrical systems, upgrading the stage and making the centre wheelchair accessible.

Doti Niedermayer is the executive director of Whistler Arts Council, which took over the management of MY Place in June. She explained that during the Olympics, when MY Place served as Whistler Media House, Ticketmaster wasn’t allowed to have a presence in the building. After the Games, WAC and MY Place decided not to renew their contract with Ticketmaster because it was labour intensive and actually costing them money to sell tickets to outside events.

“It was very, very time consuming to be a Ticketmaster outlet, and that was not covered by Ticketmaster,” Niedermayer explained. “So, for example, if the staff here were selling tickets to AC/DC or Pearl Jam, the time it took to sell that ticket, or those 30 tickets or 150 tickets, was never covered by Ticketmaster.”

Much of that has to do with the people who work tirelessly behind the scenes to make the theatre tick, so to speak.

Down in the belly of the centre, in the lower level lobby, is a windowless office where the centre’s management team has seen a major overhaul with the creation of two positions that used to be done by one person.

Executive director Pamela Burns-Resch and artistic director Erin Kennedy have taken over for the centre’s original executive director, Michael Cade, whose reign ended last fall when he decided to take a job managing Chilliwack’s cultural centre.

“In this season what we’ve tried to do is bring in the absolute best of the best of what’s on tour. And that’s what I think we’ve done here,” says Harrower.

The first act of the season is spoken word artist Shane Koyczan, who performed at the opening ceremony for the Vancouver Olympic games, and who Harrower describes as “the best poet in Canada.”

Starting Friday, Port Coquitlam’s Second Storey Theatre will play host to its inaugural Summer Heat Arts Festival, a three-day fundraiser featuring comedy, one-man shows, improv theatre, musicals and a rock opera.

Organized by the local improv group table23, it’s hoped that the weekend’s events will help finance the purchase of about 40 new chairs for the theatre.

“We’ve been constantly upgrading the theatre to make it feel like a real venue and we’ve been looking at getting real theatre seats in there, but knowing they range around $400 to $500 each, we knew it was going to be really expensive,” said festival co-ordinator and table23 member Russ Brummer.

Surrey’s Lightyear Digital Theatre (Canada) Ltd. has acquired the legendary Charles Aidikoff Screening Room at 150 Rodeo Drive, in Beverly Hills, California.

The private theatre is certified by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for Academy screenings.

It is used extensively by the “who’s who” of the motion picture industry.

Hollywood icons such as Elizabeth Taylor and Al Pacino and music legends like Paul McCartney and Gene Simmons have relaxed in the theatre’s comfortable reclining seating.  The theatre offers screenings in traditional film, high-definition digital format and 3D.  It is recognized internationally for excellence in high quality presentation and technical reliability.

But, he says, it isn’t that easy.

“What concerns me is the new theatre is not going to be ready for two or three years. That’s a considerable amount of down time,” said Davies, the vice president of the New Westminster Symphony Society.

“A period that long could likely end the lives of some arts groups in the city and leave others twisting in the wind.”

The purpose of the study was to determine the best way to house the Presentation House Gallery, Presentation House Theatre and the North Vancouver Museum. The consultants, Proscenium Architecture and Lydia Martson-Blaauw and Associates, were also tasked with researching the best use of the current Presentation House site and ways to develop Lower Lonsdale into a “cultural neighbourhood.”

All three institutions are currently crammed into the elderly and quirky Presentation House complex. That building started life in 1902 as the city’s first schoolhouse and was later the city hall. But despite several generations of add-ons, the limitations of the structure are a major barrier for development and expansion of the arts in North Vancouver.

“Sometimes it’s hard to say goodbye but we need to,” said Harrington, who served 16 years as the artistic director of the Royal City Musical Theatre, a group that has called the Massey home for 21 years.

“The character of the Massey comes from its age but that’s one of the things we have to sacrifice,” he said.

Harrington supports replacing the 1,260-seat aging theatre with a newer 1,000-seat state-of-the-art venue as the City of the New Westminster and school district proposed last week.

See also: Massey society voices concerns over its role in future theatre
http://www.bclocalnews.com/greater_vancouver/newwestminsternewsleader/news/99506039.html

Finally, after about 20 years of wanting and wishing and hoping, Kelowna’s volunteer theatre group, Theatre Kelowna, will be moving into the centre—eight years after it opened and decades after they first started fundraising to build the building.

The group is responsible for pitching in roughly $50,000 for the building—longtime member Debbie Helf’s picture even hangs in the Rotary Centre as one who brought the vision to fruition.

But when the Rotary Centre opened, the group quickly found they could not afford to take part.

1) The use, restoration or redevelopment of the PRESENTATION HOUSE ARTS CENTRE site, and the buildings that currently occupy it. 

 2) Relocation of the key arts and heritage organizations currently based in the PRESENTATION HOUSE ARTS CENTRE (the North Vancouver Museum and Archives, Presentation House Gallery and Presentation House Theatre).

3) The potential for Lower Lonsdale to act as a cultural precinct that will contribute to the liveability and economic vitality of the City.

The ‘Lower Lonsdale Cultural Facilities Study’ is available in .pdf format: http://www.artsoffice.ca/planning_and_policies/cultural_plans/articles91.php

I read this article by John Mackie with dismay and disappointment. How could we allow a historical treasure with such a rich history to be forgotten and dismissed?

The Pantages Theatre Society worked diligently with Marc Williams, of Worthington Properties, to restore the theatre, without success, and now we read that it may be beyond repair. Why has this happened? Where is the will of the community leaders who earlier had the vision to save the York Theatre and the Orpheum?

The economic activity that could be stimulated by a renovated Pantages would go a long way toward creating a renaissance in a neighbourhood that was the heart of Vancouver for many years. Just as South Granville, Granville Island and Commercial Drive have benefited from investment by all three levels of government in the Stanley and Arts Club theatres and the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, so too could Chinatown, Gastown, Strathcona and Main and Hastings benefit from an initiative like this.

The Victoria-born music icon — winner of 15 Grammys as a songwriter and producer — told the suburb of Saanich he no longer wants his name associated with a multimillion-dollar addition to the local Cedar Hill Recreation Centre.

“I don’t think I’d ever have expected it,” said Saanich mayor Frank Leonard, after receiving a phone call from Foster’s people last week to say the music mogul was pulling his name from the community-centre wing.

The 9,000-square-foot facility, slated to open next spring, will include art and pottery studios, a sound studio, a multi-purpose room for dance and other activities, and a community art gallery. The facility will cost about $4- to $5-million, Leonard said, including $2.6 million in federal and provincial stimulus funding.

The Lux on Hastings burned down. The Imperial on Main street (last known as the Venus) was knocked down for a condo. Concord Pacific tore down the remains of the Columbia and National on Hastings.

Canada’s oldest remaining vaudeville theatre, the Pantages, also looks destined for the wrecker’s ball. Years of rain pouring in through holes in the roof at 150 East Hastings has caused much of the interior to collapse.

But there is one bright spot: the Vogue.

The art deco gem at 918 Granville has been given a fresh coat of paint, literally, as part of a $2 million restoration.

“We scraped down, got paint samples and had it matched,” relates Matt Gibbons of the Gibbons Hospitality Group, which owns the theatre. “It’s what they call a ‘light buff.’ It’s the original 1941 colour.”

Jon-Paul comes to Evergreen from Keyano Theatre/Arts Centre in Alberta, a state-of-the-art facility where he was responsible for a 594-seat mainstage theatre, a 194-seat black box theatre, a dance studio, visual art studios and art gallery. Prior to Keyano, Jon-Paul was General Manager of the Vogue Theatre (1150 seats) in downtown Vancouver during a time when virtually every Vancouver International festival made the Vogue its home. He also has been involved in large event productions in Vancouver and New York, where he lived for 5 1/2 years as a stage and film performer and assistant producer for the independent film company Merchant Ivory Productions.